written by:

"Most everybody just grumps. They whine and moan and talk about how bad things are," Lanser said. "So a few weeks before the Ames caucuses I decided to throw my hat in."

Lanser went the Iowa caucus and quickly found out success in presidential politics is contingent on one thing.

"Money, it is always money and that's not bad," he said. "I don't regret that. It is a fact of life."

He was able to raise a couple thousand dollars for his campaign, but eventually gave up on his campaign.

"Without name recognition there was no point in pursuing it," Lanser said.

"There is kind of a vicious circle involved here," Norman Provizer, a political science professor at Metropolitan State University, said. "You need recognition, name recognition. You need exposure to raise money. In order to get exposure and name recognition, you need money."

Provizer says that while money is not always an accurate predictor of an election, it certainly is a big factor.

"The money factor is always there and it has always been there to a certain degree," Provizer said.

In this year's presidential election campaign spending has risen to levels previously unseen.

"Essentially, you are talking about at least a $2 billion race," Provizer said.